Finding
Use of the peremptory challenge to remove disproportionate numbers of social subgroups, however, will distort the mean verdict impact only
Paper
Peremptory Challenges and the Meaning of Jury Representation
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Full textAbstract
The Sixth Amendment requires that juries be impartial,1 and both judicial doctrines and an elaborate system of jury selection preserve this right. In Taylor v. Louisiana, 2 the Supreme Court held that the requirement of impartiality includes a requirement that juries be selected from a cross section of the community.3 Because the jury acts as the representative of society, distinctive groups may not be excluded from the jury pool.The California and Massachussets Supreme Courts recently extended these notions of representation and impartiality to rule that the peremptory challenge may not be used systematically to exclude members of social groups, not only from jury pools, but from juries themselves.5 This Note disputes the interpretation of Taylor that equates jury impartiality with cross-sectional representation. Such a view of impartiality and representation does not square with the full holding of Taylor, nor is it convincing in light of the way juries reach verdicts. Rather, the principle of jury representation should be understood to mean that certain characteristics of society that profoundly affect a jury's verdict should not be distorted in the jury selection process. The crucial aspect of the community that must be represented is not subgroup proportion, but the community's mean verdict impact-the mean tendency of its members to influence a verdict toward conviction or acquittal. Such an understanding of impartiality and representation accounts for the holding of Taylor. The systematic exclusion of subgroups from jury venires warps juries' verdict impacts away from the social mean. Use of the peremptory challenge to remove disproportionate numbers of social subgroups, however, will distort the mean verdict impact only
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